Cosmological anomaly confounds astronomers

An international team of researchers has uncovered a cosmological anomaly and are now trying to determine if it is an uncanny coincidence or a vital clue to understanding the origins of our Universe.

The irregularity, described in a paper accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters, has left the team, including researchers from Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology, scratching their heads.

According to Swinburne co-author Dr Michael Murphy, the paper reveals a strange coincidence - or at least what appears to be a strange coincidence - occurring in distant galaxies.

"We were studying the abundance of molecules containing deuterium-deuterated molecular hydrogen (HD) in two different galaxies in the distant Universe.

"What we inadvertently discovered was that in these two galaxies the fraction of molecules which were HD was the same as the fraction of atoms which were deuterium (D), hydrogen's doubly-heavy cousin. We then looked at the only other two existing measurements of HD in distant galaxies and found almost exactly the same thing."


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http://www.swinburne.edu.au/chancellery/mediacentre/research/news/2010/07/cosmological-anomaly-confounds-astronomers

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Astronomers Find Black Holes Do Not Absorb Dark Matter

There's the common notion that black holes suck in everything in the nearby vicinity by exerting a strong gravitational influence on the matter, energy, and space surrounding them. But astronomers have found that the dark matter around black holes might be a different story. Somehow dark matter resists 'assimilation' into a black hole.


About 23% of the Universe is made up of mysterious dark matter, invisible material only detected through its gravitational influence on its surroundings. In the early Universe clumps of dark matter are thought to have attracted gas, which then coalesced into stars that eventually assembled the galaxies we see today. In their efforts to understand galaxy formation and evolution, astronomers have spent a good deal of time attempting to simulate the build up of dark matter in these objects.

Dr. Xavier Hernandez and Dr. William Lee from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) calculated the way in which the black holes found at the center of galaxies absorb dark matter. These black holes have anything between millions and billions of times the mass of the Sun and draw in material at a high rate.

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http://www.universetoday.com/2010/03/22/astronomers-find-black-holes-do-not-absorb-dark-matter/

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Astronomers find 9 new planets and upset the theory of planetary formation

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The discovery of nine new planets challenges the reigning theory of the formation of planets, according to new observations by astronomers. Two of the astronomers involved in the discoveries are based at the UC Santa Barbara-affiliated Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), based in Goleta, Calif., near UCSB.

Unlike the planets in our solar system, two of the newly discovered planets are orbiting in the opposite direction to the rotation of their host star. This, along with a recent study of other exoplanets, upsets the primary theory of how planets are formed. There is a preponderance of these planets with their orbital spin going opposite to that of their parent star. They are called exoplanets because they are located outside of our solar system.

These and other related discoveries are being presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, this week. This is the first public mention of the new planets and the research will be described in upcoming scientific journal articles.

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http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/uoc--afn041310.php

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